


Another Innocent Girl

by Prix



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Slayer Drusilla (AU-BtVS) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire Slayer, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Gen, Slayer Drusilla (AU-BtVS) - Freeform, ToT: Battle of the Bands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:34:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27057289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prix/pseuds/Prix
Summary: Drusilla finds her strength and will bear its scars.
Relationships: Angelus & Drusilla (BtVS)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	Another Innocent Girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VampirePaladin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampirePaladin/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy your gift! 
> 
> **ToT Battle of the Bands:** Inspired mostly by the title of the song **Another Innocent Girl** by **Alkaline Trio**. I listened to the song and it also sound kind of like the music they use in the Buffyverse, so I figured it worked. 
> 
> ***SPOILER*** 
> 
> **Major Character Death:** Darla and still-always-evil!Angelus die.

The scent of flowers drifts into the convent, the draft making the cool spring air seem even colder. 

Drusilla likes flowers, but even the soft smell seems to fill up her brain until it is near bursting. She knows she needs to sleep to give her poor head any hope of remembering what she is to say as she takes her vows in the early morning light. 

She pulls the worn blanket up to her cheek, trying to block out the world. In her head, she prays, but it does not seem enough. 

After a while, she gets out of bed, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders as a cape over her nightgown. As she kneels at the side of her bed, the way she had as a little girl, and folds her hands before her, the blanket drops halfway down her back. Its weight still makes her feel just a little more safe. 

She does not let her voice sound very much, but she mouths the words of her prayers. It makes them feel more real, as if God might hear her and finally make her nightmares end. She prays that her devotion will be rewarded with some peace of mind. 

Suddenly, a scream pierces the silence of the night. 

Drusilla lifts her hands to her ears and trembles. She presses her hands tight as if blocking out the sound would make it go away. For months now, she has been _safe_ , but the screaming never stops. Soon, it is Drusilla who screams. 

She looks around the room, hardly able to hear over the din of her own cries which come with almost every breath. She searches for a way to escape, and the window is promising except that the fall would kill her. 

Still, the window tempts her. She draws close enough to it to look at the long way down. 

Her heart breaks to hear the familiar voices of the other women, the other girls, seeking their own way out or trying to help each other. 

Would she ever be forgiven if she were to jump? If she were to take her chance and to fail? 

The choice is taken from her suddenly when an impossibly strong hand grabs her by the arm and hauls her behind, bringing her into the chapel. She falls to the ground as she is thrown, and she hangs her head and weeps. 

“Drusilla!” Alzbeta calls to her, a young woman from here in Prague who had been so kind to her. 

“Do you know that she was thinking of abandoning you in your darkest hour, you concubine of God?” Angelus asks as he hauls Alzbeta to her feet. He sniffs along her neck, and Drusilla winces, trying not to look, burdened with shame and terror. 

She looks around and notices that there are already bodies upon the floor – lifeless, cold – just like her sisters, her mother. 

“Please,” she hears herself say. She does not know if she is asking Angelus or asking God. 

“Please, _what_? Really, you must speak up, beautiful little prophetess,” Angelus taunts her. He bites Alzbeta in a flash, but he does not yet suckle from the twin puncture wounds. Instead he holds her head against his shoulder, making a show of the way her blood trickles down onto her pure white nightgown. 

“Let her go. You came here for me. Let those that live _go_ ,” Drusilla demands with a little more conviction through her tears. She is still sitting upon the floor, helpless, her hand twisting in the length of her own gown over her legs. She grips tighter until it hurts her palm through the bunch of fabric. 

“Oh, your pet has found a voice,” says a woman with golden hair. She is with Angelus, helping him make sure none can flee the chapel through its doors. Several more bodies lie at her feet. 

Drusilla looks up, her eyes shining. She does not know how she musters the strength, nor the sanity, but she looks up at them both with a righteous rage beginning to well up within her. 

Then her gaze is empty for a long moment. She gasps, involuntarily, as she hears and sees somewhere else, far away from Prague. 

_In that place, the sun has only just set, a faint glow dying away. There is a young woman with fiery red hair and freckles marking her pale skin, though it is not as pale as Drusilla’s has become. She smiles, confidently, and she speaks with an accent not so different from Angelus’s. She is further away than Ireland, though. She twirls the short section of a tree branch in her hand, filed to an angry point._

_She traipses through a graveyard, confident in a man’s trousers it would seem._

_A creature crawls up from its grave, once a man but no more. Before the ungodly thing can even get its bearings, the pointed branch pierces the left side of his chest through his burial best. Rather than falling to the ground, the man turns to dust._

_‘There you are little witch,’ says the gravelly voice of a man from somewhere behind._

_The woman – the stranger – tries to turn to meet the voice. She never sees him before the loud crack of gunfire sounds – once, twice, three times – and two terrible holes appear in her stomach. The spent bullets, misshapen on the ground, appear to be made from silver._

_It takes a few moments for Drusilla to understand. She moves from her vantage point, like a ghost, knowing her body has gone nowhere. She looks at the woman’s hand, watching her fingers grasp the fertile, bumpy black soil and the scattered strands of grass. She wills that a sense of warmth go to her._

_No one should die all alone._

_Then she hears the voice of another, calling the strange woman’s name. The person who comes to her side is dressed in the finest London fashion but heeds it not as their knees hit the ground, stroking the woman’s fiery hair from her face. She relents, and then she is gone but not alone._

“Drusilla?” Angelus asks, cocking his head at her as he holds Alzbeta to his chest, swaying with her as if he meant to make her dance rather than die as her blood flows and seeps. “Getting a little bored here.” 

Drusilla looks around the chapel. Her eyes have welled with tears again, but she does not remember feeling it. They spill over as her eyes dart, searching for something, anything. 

“Don’t tell me you’re thinking of running? Haven’t you learned – _tonight_ – that running does you no good, darling?” Angelus taunts her. 

Drusilla hears him but only a little. The next breath she draws is of the clearest, coldest air she has ever felt enter her lungs. On it is the scent of a fire and the tingle of rain. Her pale, slender limbs feel more alive than she has ever felt before. 

She still feels anger, but more than that, she feels purpose, she feels _free_. She knows what she must do. 

“Forgive me, Father,” she says, a soft mumble, ignoring Angelus’s voice as she reaches out for the organ, an arm’s length away, and tugs with sudden force at an ornamental part of its leg. To her surprise and just as she had known it would, it rips away with a loud crack. To both ends, there are sharp, pointed splinters. 

She looks back at Angelus and to his golden-haired companion. She rises to her feet, the staff – the stake – in hand. 

“Vile creature, let her go,” Drusilla says, voice gaining strength as she speaks. “I will be your puppet, your slave, your quarry no longer!” 

“Now, this should be fun,” the woman says. She grabs another trembling girl and starts to drink from her neck in earnest. Drusilla does not know if it is to gather her strength or to taunt her, but she does not care. She crosses down the central aisle of the chapel and strikes the monstrous woman in the face. Again she strikes her until she is forced to drop her meal. 

“Oh, weak little thing has found some strength. Not for long. I will only have a sip,” the vampiress says to her. Drusilla feels a hand wrap around her throat, choking the air from within. Her newly strengthened limbs start to weaken, but she draws upon the air that remains in her lungs, her faith that her God would not want her to let this creature hurt anyone else, and the _rage_ at the wreckage left of her life to drive her stake in from behind. Somehow, she knows that the heart will be easier to reach from there. 

Suddenly, there is nothing but dust where the monster used to be. She turns, knowing Angelus will either be emboldened or enraged. She sees the shock on his twisted face, and he pushes Alzbeta to the side. Drusilla sees her weakened, bleeding friend – _sister_ – crumple to the floor. There might be time to save her if only she can— 

“Darla?” Angelus asks to the empty space at Drusilla’s feet. For a moment, he looks like a human, lost and alone. 

Drusilla’s compassionate heart aches for him, for an instant, but then she recalls the justice he is owed. 

She marches up the aisle toward him. 

“Oh, you were lucky, little one. I will see that you are like me this night. I will make a woman out of you,” he says, his face returning to that terrible, twisted, almost feline shape. 

“I meant you nor anyone any harm! Ever! In my life,” Drusilla cries back at him. He catches her by the arm the first time she tries to drive the stake through his chest. It clatters from her hand, and Angelus grabs for it. 

He manages to take it from the floor and he looks at her with a taunting grin. 

“Now where does a good little Catholic girl learn that stakes are good for killing vampires?” he taunts her. 

“Scary stories,” Drusilla tells him, more grave than dry. She eyes the stake, circling around him. She wishes her nightgown did not catch around her legs. “Do you want away with your life?” she asks him, not knowing if she is truly considering it. 

“Oh, I plan to take it and _much_ more,” Angelus says. 

It is hard to track the movements, but she feels Angelus’s body over her, its weight preventing her from moving her abdomen, her chest, her legs. She feels a wave of revulsion run through her as he takes the jagged piece of wood and scrapes it down her side, using it to start a tear in her gown at her hip. 

“You’ve been a very bad girl,” Angelus says. 

For a moment, Drusilla can think of nothing but her horror, nothing but the futility of all of this. She does not understand from whence such strength had come, but it seems to leave her as he grabs her hip through the hole in her gown. He moves his wrist, and he starts to tear it as easily as paper. 

“Stop,” she says, knowing that pleas fall on deaf ears with him. 

It occurs to her that she does not know where the wood had gone. Then she feels it, pressed tight between them. 

It is cunning to the point that it almost makes her feel that it is a sin, even against a monster, but she pushes weakly at his shoulder. He gives way a little with a laugh, just to taunt her, and she realizes that she knows her tormentor better than anyone left in the world. 

She feigns weakness, but her hand is between their heaving chests now. She snakes it down between them, grasping along Angelus’s shirt. 

“I knew you’d like it if I ever got you in a compromising position. Don’t worry about it, dear. You won’t regret it for much longer. I just want to watch your face as I take your virginity before I take your soul,” he snarls at her. 

Drusilla’s nose crinkles with disgust, but she closes her eyes, relying on every other sense all the more. She grasps the wood between them. She grasps at it, slow at first. With the other hand, she tries to pretend that she struggles as she would have before, weak and trembling. He easily traps her other wrist against the cold stone floor. 

Then she sees the horror and fear on his face. She watches as he looks human again, for only an instant, as he realizes that she has broken the long piece of wood in two, causing it to jab up into his chest. She rams it hard, with all her might, rolling over on top of him. 

Then she falls to the floor atop terrible dust which coats her hands. 

She wants to go to Alzbeta, to the others, to see if any of them are alive, if any of them can be saved. 

She cannot move. 

She weeps, staring at her hands, blood and dust caking them until she can hardly see her palms. 

She only moves at all as the sound of the chapel door opens up. 

She is afraid that all of them are monsters and that she will not have the strength to fight them. She fears now that the monsters will never end. 

All of them seem human, though. Humans on a mission of mercy. She hears old ladies cry out with horror. She watches as they cross themselves. She sees young women and young men begin to try and stop the bleeding of some, to move the bodies of others into a more respectful position. 

She feels her empty stomach clenching like she might throw up bile. 

A man walks down the aisle toward her, wearing long, dark robes. He appears to be a priest in the dark chapel, but she cannot make out his face. 

“Father—” she says to him, reaching out to cling to his robe from her knees. She hides her face in the folds of it. “Father,” she repeats, not knowing his name, “forgive me for I have sinned. I… I am a _murderer_ ,” she weeps, muffled by the fabric. 

“No, I… think you will find what you have done falls quite readily under the banner of self-defense,” the man replies. He has a posh Londoner’s accent. She looks up at him, fearful and suspicious but still clinging. He is not from Prague. 

He reaches down to take her – oh so gently – by the arm. He hauls her to her feet, and she lets him. She is too weak – of spirit of not of body – to do anything else. 

She watches as the man looks all around, seeing that the others who are helping her occupied. 

“I need to speak with you alone, Drusilla,” he says to her. 

Drusilla frowns and starts to try and tug her arm away. 

“Please, sir, I am… to take my vows in the morning. I do not wish to be alone with any man who is not a man of God,” she says. 

“I am… terribly sorry, Drusilla, but I believe you have… another calling. But it can be a holy mission, if you like. I can explain more if you will just come with me. We can… get you some fresh air,” he offers. He seems very kind, if a bit unmoved by the scene around him. 

Drusilla hesitates. She looks behind her and _remembers_ , feeling monstrous for forgetting. 

“Wait. Alzbeta—?” she cries out. She reaches for her, tugging away from the man to kneel by her side. 

A woman about her mother’s age shakes her head with tears in her eyes as she holds a towel to her neck. 

“She breathes, but she has lost very much blood,” she says to her. 

“No. No, no, no,” Drusilla says, sitting back and drawing her knees to her chest. She scrambles to try and wrap her torn gown around her legs for decency’s sake. 

“Drusilla,” the man calls upon her patiently. “Please, come with me. There… may yet be something we can do for your friends who yet live. And we can… avenge those who do not survive.” 

He crouches down to haul her to her feet. She looks at him with a childish scowl on her face. 

“I already killed the monsters,” she informs him. 

“Yes. You did. And that buys us some time, but I am afraid there are many, many more,” he agrees. 

Drusilla manages to watch his eyes for a moment, but then she is shaking her head, reaching up to clasp her hands over her ears. 

“No, no, no,” she says in a litany again. Before she knows it, she has hid her face against the man’s shoulder, only to muffle her weeping. 

“There are monsters, Drusilla, but you are… now the one girl in all the world who can fight them. And I believe you have more than earned such a power,” he says to her. He wraps his arms around her shoulders and gently rubs her back. She feels no malice in his arms, no perverse intent. He calms her. 

She finally lifts her head, reddened eyes glaring just in case. 

“Who… Who _are_ you?” she asks him, quite imprudently – as much as she can muster. 

“I am your Watcher,” he tells her. “It is… my job to protect you and yours to protect the world, Miss Drusilla. Now, I can explain more, but we really must go elsewhere...” he says, a nervous sort of tone manifesting in his voice. 

Drusilla frowns. She does not like it, but he seems to know about the monsters, and she knows that there is no place left for her here. She draws another deep, cool breath and slowly exhales. She nods and tries to find her feet. He helps her up but only a little. She still clings to his robes, looking back as her friend is straightened out to be moved to a doctor’s. 

“Al-Alright. I’ll… come with you, Mister Watcher-Man,” she says to him.


End file.
